Starts With A Bang

A dense starfield, with various colored stars shimmering through a dark cloud-like formation, lies against a deep black background in the mysterious zone of avoidance.
The Universe is out there, waiting to be discovered

Our mission is to answer the biggest questions of all, scientifically.

What is the Universe made of? How did it become the way it is today? Where did everything come from? What is the ultimate fate of the cosmos?

For most of human history, these questions had no clear answers. Today, they do. Starts With a Bang, written by Dr. Ethan Siegel, explores what we know about the universe and how we came to know it, bringing the latest discoveries in cosmology and astrophysics directly to you.

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Ethan Siegel is an award-winning PhD astrophysicist and the author of four books, including The Grand Cosmic Story, published by National Geographic.

Full Profile
A bald man with a long beard and handlebar mustache gestures with his hands against a backdrop of an upside-down cityscape wearing a purple shirt.
dark matter substructure intracluster light
In theory, dark matter is cold, collisionless, and only interacts via gravity. What we see in ultra-diffuse galaxies indicates otherwise.
A spacecraft travels at the fastest spacecraft speed record through bright, yellow-orange streaks of plasma and solar wind near the Sun.
The Parker Solar Probe is about to undergo its seventh encounter with Venus on its journey toward the Sun. Here's how fast it'll go.
Lockman hole galaxy cluster herschel
In all directions, at great distances, the Universe looks younger, more uniform, and less evolved. Does that mean Earth must be the center?
time dilation
Time is relative, not absolute, as gravity and motion both cause time to dilate. Your head and feet, therefore, don't age at the same rate.
A deep-space image captured by the JWST showcases numerous galaxies of various shapes, sizes, and colors scattered across a dark background, potentially setting a new cosmic distance record.
Despite many ultra-distant galaxy candidates found with JWST, we still haven't seen anything from the Universe's first 250 million years.
A large, intricate machine with metallic components and blue scaffolding in a laboratory setting. Numerous cables and pipes are connected to the central structure.
LHC scientists just showed that spooky quantum entanglement applies to the highest-energy, shortest-lived particles of all: top quarks.
Two views of the same celestial object: the fiery orange-blue image on the left and a cooler blue-pink image on the right, showcasing an hourglass-shaped cloud of gas and dust in space.
Just 460 light-years away, the closest newborn protostars are forming in the Taurus molecular cloud. Here are JWST's astonishing insights.